


War of Attrition

by Raynidreams



Category: Wolverine (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Dementia, Gen, Old Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 02:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10350162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raynidreams/pseuds/Raynidreams
Summary: Timelines being what they are in X-Men, this is set sometime before Logan (2017). Charles and Erik rest together, waiting...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning over brief referencing to Erik's childhood.

A Hermle clock ticked on the mantle over the empty fireplace. Charles watched the slow creep of its hands as he recited: his words metric and level. Calmly, he pictured them within his head, set on a cream page, printed in Bookman font and in a volume quarto sized. He spoke them meditatively; his own breath rising and falling in with the sounds of the ventilator.

Expressionless, he watched that clock, inside cognitively turning pages, until his eyes physically felt too dry to continue, and so he closed them to blindly enjoy the rays of afternoon sun that slanted in from outside to bounce off the back of his bare head.

The ventilator pulled in and then dragged out.

He'd been sat there for days now. Jean had said it could be anytime and so he'd barely left, dozing in his chair, waiting for the moments of lucidity. The moments when they would discuss peace, redemption, and j _ust deserts_ , in varied idiomatic and referential ways. Fragmented moments in which they'd quote and argue with words from Homer, Shakespeare, Voltaire, on and on; wage a war with worn chess pieces on a board where all the players and squares were grey.

Charles' mind idled as he orated to the quiet room. " _Anger may in time change to gladness_ ," he said and opened his eyes at the sound of fabric rustling. He looked to where Erik was stretched out on the bed by his side.

The ventilator pulled in and then dragged out.

"... _vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed..._ ' He faltered. The image in his head of him holding the book extinguished. The old man looked down to his hands... Water prickled in his eyes.

"Now, now, Charles. No tears."

A fleshless hand moved over and briefly touched Charles' knee. He couldn't feel it, only see it of course. Erik knew that as Charles understood, and he snorted a little in response.

In a dry whisper, Erik continued, "I believe the line you are after is: _But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again_...' he paused, an uneasy rattle in his chest. A few moments passed in which he struggled to catch his breath. Charles waited for him to continue without moving. Erik coughed. He took two or three more mismatched breaths, and then finished, ' _And... nor can the dead ever live_." Erik swivelled sunken eyes to Charles, "Or something to that effect, anyway."

Charles inclined his head. A brief phantom smile shaped his lips. The picture of the page in the book returned to his head clearly but he realised that in thinking about it, he could no longer remember where he'd read it first. Was it here? At Westchester? The memory held the scent of cigar smoke and taste of Delamain cognac, which didn't help. Memories, he recalled, habitually reformed themselves, but better than most, he used to be able to keep his most important ones intact with a photorealistic clarity. The young man who'd held the book popped it back on the shelf and turned to joke with a person standing behind him.

"Charles?"

The seated man paused in his musing and focused his attention back on Erik. Charles found two of his fingers at his temple with no memory of putting them there. He smiled bittersweetly at Erik and dropped his hand. "My apologies, Erik. I was thinking about books and memories."

"Tut tut. Looking back? Nostalgia, it's a killer. Or, are we just feeling dusty and forgotten today?"

Charles chuckled, genuine amusement in the peak of his eyebrows. "Maybe. Perhaps. You know, I used to think that I'd go out Western style, in a blaze of glory. In most of those imaginings, it was against you!"

It was Erik's turn to laugh. "I nearly had you, so, so, many times. I'm pretty sure of that. And from what our old untameable friend says, there's been realities where it might have happened. Fighting the fight, apart..."

"And also together?" Charles finished, in anticipation.

"I've told you not to read my mind, old friend.' Erik glanced at Charles and sighed at himself. "Oh, you didn't. I must be getting predictable." He snorted weakly down his nose, one riddled with open pores. "I imagine, you'd argue, I always was, eh?"

"Never. Never. Anything but that. Can the shadow predict the flame? No, it only echoes. You always knew how to use what knowledge you had to gain more." He took Erik's hand and brushed a finger over liver spots and arthritic knuckles.

"Flame. Shadow. It occurs to me how you can't have one without the other, Charles," Erik said, and then paused. "Charles, oh, Charles. What are we doing here really? Waiting for me to die?" He dampened his lips. "Waiting for you?" He waived his free hand around slowly. His wrist creaked. "The school's empty. Your children are grown, leading their lives, such as they can. Some disappearing. Some, having their power eroded... Annihilated. And us two? Here. We. Are... Sparring over nothing with words from dead philosophers. Standing like Lear, shouting at the sky."

"I'd argue the point about the standing."

Erik chuckled, then his hand contracted around Charles'. "Amusing, friend. But even you have to acknowledge, there's no-one to fight, because there's nothing to fight for. We're not even fighting each other any more... not really."

"It's not the peace I was looking for, you're right. But I have to believe..." Charles let go of a tattered inhalation with an equally threadbare exhalation. He looked away from Erik, across at the clock, then out of the window to where birds sang and his old ears just about picked up on the sound of a distant car horn but nothing else.

"That mutant kind will return? And who will be there for them? You? The X-Men? We who were our own Gods; the forerunners of our kind. We let our children down... Fuck, maybe we are only human after all..." His breath hitched as the machine helping him breathe blipped. "Our species is dying. Dead. And maybe it's time for us to go too. Not wailing, but going quietly, without choice, silently, into the dying of the light. Maybe this is the only peace we get. The promise of death."

"I don't want to say goodbye, Erik. That's why I don't. That's why I sit here and we do as we have always done."

"You're afraid, aren't you? That our lives have been pointless. You're afraid of all the things you know and yet don't know. How, _he who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster._ Each day is one long drawn out goodbye for us, Charles. Even a long sunset will eventually go black. So, why torture yourself with it?"

Charles' chin trembled. "Because I can't give up hope."

A pained expression crossed Erik's face. He tried to use his power to raise the bed up to argue further but that he didn't have the energy was clear.

The clock ticked.

"Charles?"

"Hm. Erik, what?"

"You were reciting to me. _The Art of War,_ remember?"

"I don't have that book."

"Come on old friend, surely you can remember reading it? You know... But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again. And... and nor can the dead ever live." Erik's voice gave out like the air around him was sparse.

"Oh of course. We were in London when I first read that, you know. You came in, aromatic of cigars and brandy. High on some achievement..."

"Charles, read?"

" _The Art of War,_ of course. _But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life._ You paraphrased a bit, but it was close enough for intent."

Charles' eyes strayed back to the window as Erik laughed then started to cough painfully. It went on longer than before.

"Erik, oh. I'm so sorry. I'll call Jean or one of the others. I'm sure they can give you some relief for that..." Charles trailed off. He started to look upset again.

"Folie à deux!" Erik said without thinking. Charles' expression turned from pain to bewilderment, and then the dying man relented. He thought hard about bright candles and a hand to his cheek. Charles smiled dreamily.

Erik rose their joint hands a little and then let them fall to the bed. His voice shook as he spoke, "And close enough, Charles? Ah, well. I never had the brain for remembering texts like you did. I was always more the one about acting on impulse rather than postulating." A tear slipped down his dry cheek, catching in a wrinkle of skin, finding a furrow. "But, close enough? Yes, of course my old friend. Truly, I always was."

They settled back to listen to the clock tick. The ventilator pulled in and then dragged out.

 

 


End file.
